


Goes On And On

by XtaticPearl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Friendship, Gen, Normal Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 11:05:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11576796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: Peter breaks a bone, Tony drives a car, and Steve grows a beard. There are things life does that are not always special, and it happens to people who probably cannot hold themselves all that special as well. But bones mend, cars turn, and beards get maintained - life goes on, however special the circumstances.





	Goes On And On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazywriter7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/gifts).



> For @lazywriter7, who made me believe in my writing again.

The bluffs of Palos Verdes stretch over broken chunks of land, winds oversweeping water to curl up near the jagged shore. Tony looks out over the entire expanse, the scenic destruction of organized land distribution and smoother shorelines. It's quiet today, the ridiculously pristine trail dotted with the stray loner or lost man gazing into their phones as the sky frowns between its darkness. Beside him, Happy's snores are getting lower, his suit creased over the shoulders and the double chin pronounced when he dips his chin to his chest. Tony teased him about a tuck job last month, he remembers, but Happy had just looked grumpier and that hadn't helped his case in any way. 

The radio changes tracks and Tony spares a second to muse about the antiquity of listening to a radio in a 1970 Boss. It probably makes him seem older than he is, but really, Tony doesn't know if he is truly as young as he should be either, so it probably evens things out. Maybe age shouldn't bother him anymore, not with the ever-growing list of other intangible things he adds to his repertoire of Fuck Me Over every passing month. He colours his hair, trims his beard, stocks up his make-up; he has his weapons stocked up against age, so he probably shouldn't be bothered about it. He visualizes Rhodey with that half-formed frown of his shooting him a dry look at this thought. Through his red-tinted glasses, the visual of Rhodey looks a bit angrier than he should be credited, but Tony's eyes probably have anger tuned to them by now, so it's another thing he swipes away. Pepper would probably counter him with some idealized philosophy module, of age being just a number but he can hear her voice sharpening and shooting into amusement as she would add a quip about Tony's numbers being old anyway. He sees her tucking a lock of wayward red hair behind her ear and a long leg tucking under her knee. He wonders if Happy's pocket feels heavier after yesterday, a little more than the last eight years probably.

He shifts the gear and looks out the window, eyeing another topic to think about. The trail looks calm with its silence and Tony wonders about the pebbles that knock together under it, building up to the echoes of that silence as the waves shift. The half rugged pebble sitting heavy in his jacket claps against his chest as he breathes in the anxiety-free air that reeks of a thousand other problems. That smells stale. A fake Nature, he muses and drums his fingers over the wheel running loose beneath his hand. 

A look at the rear-view would show him miles and yards of dusted pathways, turns he has crossed without pausing to run on his present spot. The engine runs smooth and the dust from the road wouldn't stick to it, he knows that. He built it that way, with precision in gears and care in protection. It unsettles the road when the wheels run over it, but the engine doesn't hold specks of the forgotten lanes. Machines, Tony muses as he hums to the nonsensical beat of the radio, are the least complex men somebody created. Their malfunctions have reasons, their parts can be remade with enough will, and their existence is limited. 

A ghost hum of a blue-lit core buzzes in his ear and Tony lets out a breathy chuckle. Happy grunts under his snores but slumbers on. Tony shoots him a quick glance from under his sunglasses and wonders how bad a picture would look of his friend drooling into his own shoulder. The sentence sounds odd in his mind and Tony doesn't reflect on it much. Archaic words do slip into his thoughts sometimes and 'friend' doesn't seem all that outdated with the right context, maybe. If Happy is as apart from his name then maybe friend is usable to someone who holds his back but also a cheque in his other hand every month. 

The wind seems to be turning bitter in scent and Tony clicks his tongue.

A biker sounds a bell as he passes beside the car and Tony considers the last time he heard something as simple as that. Phone's rings were persistent, doorbells were unwelcome, Avengers alarms were unhappy, shutterbugs were mind-numbing. His own breathing for company at night? Well, that was - he'd probably not consider that simple. A bike's bell was strange to the man who flew, and Tony tapped his foot on the accelerator as he looked away back at the jagged plains of an angry cliff.

Simple was probably relative, he reasons and shifts his foot back off the accelerator, humming the broken beat again.

The headlights were muted under the workshop's glares but they shine bright in the darkened path of the lonely trail. Tony knew this trail, not as well as he knew the alleys around Park Avenue, but he knew their turns enough to anticipate them. He was good at that, anticipation. Prediction was a cheap sibling of it and yet stood out as the star to the world, but Tony reveled in the rejected but better choice - anticipation. It held a thrill to it, an adrenaline of not knowing mixed with a certainty of knowing _something._ It was also despairing to the impatient and many had called him that; but if Tony had one old friend by now, it was despair, so he was okay with that part of the package. He anticipated bumps, bends, blinders, and blocks of what lay ahead, because no road of his had ever turned out to be smooth. It wasn't a variable in his probabilities, smoothness. It was -

A stranger, Tony thought as he caught the eye of a teenager smoking overlooking the trail. The girl simply stared back before turning back to the open scene and flicking out ash. Tony didn't know much about teenagers - well, any more than he knew about a teenager who had superhuman strength and an annoying amount of familiarity from the past montage he wanted to forget. He wondered if Peter smoked, and tried to imagine it as he cleared his throat and shot a fleeting glance at the rear-view. Was 15 an appropriate age for smoking? He sniffed lightly and changed the radio track, thoughts of fifteen year old kids holding Staten Island Ferry and getting kicked by 99 year old supersoldiers turning into the lyrics of Edward Sharpe's  _Home_. 

Happy snorted awake at that and Tony wonders if that was his inner Alabama boy responding to the opening words. 

"Wha-What's it?" the ex-driver and current fri - passenger of Tony's blinked at the radio before frowning at Tony.

"Route check," Tony grinned and tapped the wheel, grin turning wider when Happy groaned low, "C'mon, have a little fun, don't be a pooper. You can't sleep beside the driver, you know the rules."

"Yeah, well, I didn't sign up for a midnight drive," Happy groused, rubbing his forehead and straightening in his seat, "What time is it?"

"Time to change the way," Tony shifted the gear and made a turn right before the destination, smoothing a U-turn back to the direction they came from, "C'mon, you gotta sing your way back this time."

"I'm not singing...this," Happy waved a hand at the radio and Tony let out a sharp laugh as the car swerved back on track. The headlights pierced the darkness and Tony looked at the long miles ahead of him.

Edward Sharpe harped about finding his way back home and Tony joined him in singing the words as he drove back to the Compound, where an AI, some old bots, and an entire tomorrow lay waiting for him. 

Maybe he'd even call Peter to congratulate on bluffing his way through Spanish class, he thought and stepped on the accelerator at Happy's scowl.

\-------

Mr. Morita was Captain America's friend's son. He also has a crease between his brows that etched in deeper whenever he caught sight of Ned and Peter. Peter would love to claim either observation as his own, but it was strangely Michelle who had pointed this out during a lunch break, over dried pasta.

Considering her current stare pointed his way, he wonders if it really is so strange. She  _is_ known for her good observation skills, or so Ned says.

"I fell," he says as he stuffs his Vol. 3 of  _Thiol_ - _X chemistries_ book into the locker with one hand, his grey sweater tangling in the sharp nook of the locker for  a second before he pulls his hand out.

"I didn't ask, actually," she replies and Peter eyes the other end of the hallway, looking out for Ned to walk in with his books from the library. The bluff had worked on Spanish class yesterday but he doesn't think that Ms. Jordan would buy it for the Physics test in an hour. Michelle doesn't budge from her spot near his locker and he looks over her shoulder. To her credit, she doesn't move to block his view.

He probably gives her lesser credit than she is due.

"We have a practice today after school," she says and he shifts his attention to her but she's eyeing his hand with a half-convincing bored expression, eyes droopy under the haywire hair over her forehead, "I don't want to endure Flash's monologue for fifteen minutes again."

"Yeah, I - uh, I'll be on time," he says and shifts his sling higher to break her focus from the shoddy work. She blinks and coolly looks up, jaw shifting for a second but then nods.

And continues standing there, leaning against the locker next to Peter's. It's Ned's locker and Peter has a good mind to ask her if she's stuck to the gum somebody had stuck to it that morning, as a prank. He swallows and bobs his head awkwardly, looking away with the strangest 'cool pose' he could come up with. He can hear Michelle breathing out, a long exhale that speaks volumes longer than his chemistry books, and eyes the group of jocks huddling by the stairs. Maybe if he made himself visible to them they'd come and provide a distraction with a -

Yeah, maybe one broken set of bones is good for a couple of days. 

"I know who you are," Michelle says and Peter snaps his focus back to her, breath quickening and eyes widening to what he's sure is comic levels. 

"Wh-what?"

"The Spanish drama," Michelle shrugs but her eyes flicker to Peter's hand before looking back at his face, the cool expression intact, "you know, the one you were recommended to review for internals? You said you didn't remember the name of the show you had been assigned.  _I Know Who You Are_ , that's the one."

Peter tries not to visibly act flustered but he can see her eyes turn judgemental for a second when she catches his free hand curling up into a fist before relaxing. Yeah, good observation skills.

"Thanks," he says and he's good at keeping secrets, good at holding a lie but he doesn't know who's lying more right now. Michelle doesn't fiddle with her suspenders, doesn't tap her feet, doesn't twitch with visible tells but her eyes stare into his with the hidden truth and he can't prove it but he knows that she knows that too. Just as she can't prove what she saw yesterday.

They're both liars and his bones ache with a twinge as he shifts on his feet. His shoulders aren't used to the ache. Maybe broken bones are heavier than joint ones, he thinks deliriously before clearing his throat.

"No problem," she says and he  _knows_ that it's a problem, knows it as clearly as he had known that the muggers were going to attack her yesterday behind the deli. Knows it as well as he had known that his bones would crack as he shot a web to save Michelle's falling sister instead of shooting a web to stop himself from falling off the roof. 

"You should have a back-up," she says and he blinks, distractedly knowing that somebody just threw a banana peel on the floor next to him but not bothering to see who it was, "For future schedules. You should have a back-up of your work and assignment schedules. Just in case."

 _What are they talking about?_ Peter stares at the book Michelle is holding to her chest and can make out the end of some Physics title.

"Yeah, uh, I'll manage, thanks," he says and she nods, like he has understood her point.  _What are they even talking about_?

"I'll see you during practice?" she asks, even though she is finally moving away from the locker and he nods, trying to understand if she really does know him or if this whole conversation had a double meaning in his head.

"I'll be on time," he repeats and she grins a little, a small flash of a smile before nodding, like he said something she had been waiting for. Like he understood what she wanted to hear. 

"Good," she waves vaguely as she turns and begins walking away, "Swing by on time, Peter!"

He rolls his shoulder and stares at her walking away from him. Somebody slips on the banana peel beside him and probably breaks a bone. Peter doesn't really look down and tests his injured hand with a closed fist.

Michelle hadn't thanked him last evening when he had saved her and her sister, but she had shot him a look as he had waved her away. Like she didn't want to leave. Like she cared. 

He remembered another girl walking away, telling him to find solutions to his problems and answers to his secrets. 

His arm still aches but Peter knows that it'll mend. He decides to let it mend on its own, in its own time. Maybe some things were meant to happen on their own.

In the meanwhile, he spotted Ned and nodded at him. He had a test to prepare for.

And then a Captain's orders to follow after school.

\------

The art gallery was considerably smaller than Basteau's two streets away. It had a smaller area physically and a smaller collection to boast of. It didn't hold _Monet_ or  _Mona Lisa_ , and its clientele weren't dressed in Louboutins, but it did its job and did it as best as it could. And it gave him a place to earn his lunch, so Steve wasn't really going to complain. He cracked his knuckles and rotated his neck as he rolled up his sandwich cover. The distance from his table to the trashcan was closer than that of an average target cover, but Steve preferred walking over.

Sometimes the smallest things made him seem normal. He shuffled between the tables and reached the rabbit shaped trashcan, throwing the cover into it. The last remains of an overpriced meal down the drain.

Squinting his eyes against the draining sun, Steve looked up at the clear sky. The clouds weren't really visible at mid-day but he presumed that they would still be better than Benny's last painting; a mess of water-colours that the guy tried to load off as artistic interpretation of life. Steve was sure that the buyer wasn't sold but he was also sure that he shouldn't have been able to hear the conversation itself. A gift from super-hearing, that was thankfully unknown to his employers.

Running a hand down his face, he looked forward and began his short walk back to the gallery. Sam would be getting off his shift from the training class in an hour, if Steve's internal clock was right, and Steve knew that the man would probably head out to the market today. He had spent the past week complaining about the lack of orange juice in the fridge, even thought the fridge was broken and would clearly spoil the juice. Still, maybe it was the appearance that mattered, Steve thought and lightly kicked a stray pebble off the road. 

It wasn't the only thing that followed that idea, anyway. Steve nodded at the nurse he knew lived across the gallery as she passed by him, and wondered if another nurse from the past would recognise him today. Well, Sharon wasn't really a nurse, just as Natasha wasn't really a diplomat today, but both of them had fooled better men.

Steve rubbed at his growing beard and wondered if calling himself a better man was really appropriate nowadays. A rugged young guy began creating a ruckus at the grocery store he passed by and Steve considered that maybe he was better than that guy. Last week the drunk lady had thrown her shoe at him and he hadn't thrown her back on the road, even though Morsey, the ex-security guard, had said to try so if things got out of control. Steve thought that control meant a different thing for him and the others. 

His control was keeping his head down during the day, posing as a security guard with a dyed beard and hair, and running as a caped vigilante at night. Sam had some choice words for the cape but Sam had some choice words whenever Steve did what Sam didn't do, so he guessed that it was an accepted part of their new normal.

Natasha would probably like the new costume, Steve mused as he ignored the curious look of a brunet biker. It was still spandex, but, with more...show. Probably the right word, considering it showed a lot. Steve could feel the eyes of the brunet linger on him for a minute as he walked on and then shift away. It was probably the beard. People seemed to have a thing for the beard, especially with his darker shade of hair now. 

Steve wondered if another brunet would think so too. He knew that Bucky would laugh at it, but maybe another brune-

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked to his left before crossing the street. Distraction meant disaster sometimes.

An ambulance siren wailed at a distance and Steve walked forward, swallowing his impulses with every step over the painted road. Disasters seemed to happen everywhere, and he couldn't afford to be distracted with every single one of them. Some of them were meant for those who could help. Who were sought for help.

He smiled at his shoes as he reached the other end of the street, tossing the word 'irony' around in his head. It was always a late visitor in his life, it would seem. Some would even say that it waited for him to mess up.

He didn't know when he had started shifting all some to Tony's voice. Maybe it was when he had shifted to Berlin. Maybe it was when he had decided to hide in plain sight. 

Maybe it was when he had grown a memorial to a lost chance through a brunet beard. 

As he reached the gallery again, Steve rolled a block in his pant pocket and squinted up at the sky again. He knew that nobody would recognize him from up there, or probably even down here. Not with a mask growing over his face, an ever present reminder of what he was not.

But maybe somebody would recognize a number. He knew that it was one thing 'somebody' never forgot, one thing that hadn't changed for a long time. The one strand of communication he had kept as it was, despite changing everything else.

Steve palmed the phone for another second before taking his position outside the gallery again, running a hand over his face, frowning at the crumbs he came away with. Dusting himself, he decided to clean up his mess before anybody came in. The rough tangle of hair scratched at his palm and Steve wiped his hand on his pant as he pulled out his walky-talky, back to his day job.

Maybe he'd even trim the mess one of these days. Give lesser chances for dust to settle in it. Be ready to face people, whenever necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can see it as a ship if you want or just consider it a breeze through possibility. I hope that you like it, either way.


End file.
